Generating machine-executable plans from end-user's natural-language instructions

Abstract

It is critical for advanced manufacturing machines to autonomously execute a task by following an end-user's natural language (NL) instructions. However, NL instructions are usually ambiguous and abstract so that the machines may misunderstand and incorrectly execute the task. To address this NL-based human-machine communication problem and enable the machines to appropriately execute tasks by following the end-user's NL instructions, we developed a Machine-Executable-Plan-Generation (exePlan) method. The exePlan method conducts task-centered semantic analysis to extract task-related information from ambiguous NL instructions. In addition, the method specifies machine execution parameters to generate a machine-executable plan by interpreting abstract NL instructions. To evaluate the exePlan method, an industrial robot Baxter was instructed by NL to perform three types of industrial tasks {'drill a hole', 'clean a spot', 'install a screw'}. The experiment results proved that the exePlan method was effective in generating machine-executable plans from the end-user's NL instructions. Such a method has the promise to endow a machine with the ability of NL-instructed task execution.